Five Stages
by Sueg5123
Summary: It was so obvious now. The emails stopped because she had stopped writing them—because she'd been knifed in a hostile crowd—because she was in a hospital somewhere, probably on life support with two priests administering the last rites.


**Five Stages**

 **A/N** : Sorry, guys, this one is unapologetic, shameless, and totally manipulative angst. _Enjoy_.

 **Denial**

There was nothing on Tuesday. Nor on Wednesday.

Thursday, _zilch_.

And that was when she first noticed that the emails had stopped.

Perhaps it was just a temporary disturbance, but the regular daily arrival of an email from _MMMcHale_ to _WDMcAvoy_ had ceased.

Ellin wasn't sure what to make of it at first and so hesitated to mention it. She didn't know if the reaction would be relief or if he would be incensed that she had dared mention the emails at all. He had, after all, told her months ago, back when this first began, that he didn't want to read them, didn't want to accidentally find them in his IN box, didn't want to hear anything about them. He just wanted her to make the emails disappear. He'd been quite emphatic on that point.

That was the only guidance he'd given. So, understandably, she wasn't sure if she was supposed to delete them or merely quarantine them. And because she was also unsure about the propriety (let alone _legality_ ) of deliberately deleting information from the company server, she decided to just segregate and archive them. That way, they still could be retrieved if she was ever called to account for them.

But when the emails stopped, that left the dilemma of whether to mention the cessation.

Mr. McAvoy could be, um, _irascible_. That was a fair and accurate assessment from a fairly loyal and frequently unfairly put-upon assistant. He could also be brusque and caustic and dismissive of the usual office courtesies.

As when she'd given him a phone message on Thursday that a James Harper had called.

"Who is this?"

"I _think_ that was what he said his name was. It was a really bad connection."

"Don't know him. Probably trying to sell something." He crumpled the note and pitched it toward the waste basket near her desk, wishing he could find an assistant who could better screen his calls.

So, obviously, mentioning _those_ emails after this encounter (not to mention the vehemence of his original instruction) seemed risky.

She opted to wait.

Harper called back on Friday, but, as before, it was a bad connection. McAvoy declined to take the call, merely ordered her to take a message, but she couldn't understand most of what was being said over the static and echoes.

The message she finally gave her boss read, improbably, _Maccabees airswift lanshtoo_.

Another crumpled phone message came whistling at her.

Nothing to lose now, she cleared her throat and _put it out there_ about the emails.

"I thought I told you I never—" He swore and turned on his heel, diving back to the sanctuary of his office.

She, meanwhile, proceeded directly to Steve on the newsroom floor and asked for immediate reassignment. Enough of this.

 **Bargaining**

A few hours later, Will's cell phone pulsed. Charlie.

"I need to see you—now."

"Be up in a few." As Will loped toward the bank of elevators, he noticed that Ellin's desk was vacant. Even her kitsch-y desk adornments were gone.

She was probably off weeping in the women's room, he thought, sourly. Another one who couldn't follow simple instructions.

When he got to Charlie's office, there was a visitor in the chair opposite Charlie's desk.

 _What gives?_

"Here he is now." Charlie rose and gestured to the other man. "Will, this is Jay Klein, my opposite number at CNN."

Handshakes and murmurs of "Pleasure" were exchanged. Will took a chair.

"Jay came by to—" Charlie broke off and looked down at where his fingertips rested on the desk.

Klein turned and leaned heavily on the armrest of his chair. "If I'm overstepping my bounds, I'm sure you'll tell me. But I remembered that you worked together a few years ago when you were at CNN, and I'd heard—" his eyebrows shot up and he waggled his hands, "heard there might have been some personal relationship, so I didn't want this to come at you without some preparation—"

"What's this about?" Visibly impatient, Will looked from Klein to Charlie and back again.

Klein winced. Better to get it all out at once. Chances were it wouldn't matter anyway.

"MacKenzie McHale was knifed the other day in Peshawar. She was there covering the protests by the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political sect that—"

"How is she?" Charlie interrupted, openly disinterested in the details of the assignment that had put her in harm's way.

Will straightened from his usual slouch but he said nothing. He exhaled and kept exhaling because it suddenly felt quite natural for his lungs to be totally devoid of oxygen. He waited for the other shoe to fall.

"They evacuated her to that U.S. military hospital in Germany—"

"Landstuhl—" Charlie supplied.

"Yes, Landstuhl. It's been touch-and-go. I think there've been a couple of surgeries now, so obviously this wasn't a minor thing."

"But she's going to—" Will wouldn't commit himself to the last word.

Klein sighed. "The attending physician is 'guardedly optimistic.'" _Whatever that means._ He offered a self-deprecating little shrug. "Sorry we couldn't have met under other circumstances, Will. I like your work. If you ever find yourself—"

"Hold the fucking line right there, Jay. Are you trying to poach my anchor?" Charlie's incredulity wasn't manufactured. He had believed Klein came here from honest concern and now—

Klein stood and backed away, palms outward. "Charlie, you of all people know it never hurts to put out a feeler. No harm meant. Anyway, sorry about your friend," he added, now that he could judge from Will's impassivity how little the news had meant after all.

"Get the fuck out of my office."

Klein complied with alacrity.

After his departure, Charlie lined up two glasses and began to pour.

 **Anger**

It would be just like her, to go and get herself killed just to maintain the moral high ground.

 _No. That's—_ worse _than unkind. That's inhuman, McAvoy. Maybe you_ are _a monster._

She never called you that.

 _Maybe she should've._

Ellin's desk was still empty and, as he passed by it, he kicked at the waste basket. Near it, he saw the crumpled phone message from earlier and picked it up.

 _Maccabees airswift lanshtoo._

MacKenzie. Airlift. Landstuhl.

 _Fuck_.

There was no return phone number. All he had was a faceless name and Ellin's ludicrously incomprehensible translation. He re-crumpled the message and flung it at the target again.

 _Bullseye_.

It was so obvious now. The emails stopped because she had stopped writing them— _because she'd been knifed in a hostile crowd_ —because she was in a fucking hospital somewhere, probably on fucking life support with two priests administering the last rites.

 _She'd insist on the double confirmation, of course._

He dropped into the chair behind his desk, still probing the abscess of his anger.

Surgeries. Plural.

" _So obviously this wasn't a minor thing."_

He reached for the computer mouse and opened his browser. Googled Mac.

 _Nothing._

He didn't disbelieve Klein, but how had CNN kept this quiet? Was the hapless journalist story now so much a part of the news landscape that its very ubiquity would hide it?

Was this just something else she wanted to hide from him, deceive him with?

 _Whoa. Back up there, McAvoy. She was entitled to live her own life. You threw her out, remember?_

Not without good cause. She'd been—

 _Conflicted?_

Lying.

— _But when she told you the truth, you—_

This is not what I meant.

 _Doesn't matter. You know about proximate causation._

Pushing her out of his life had been a great deal different than wishing her dead.

"Ellin—Ellin—"

Finally, his bellows brought someone to the door. He didn't know this one.

"Ellin's on the assignment desk now, sir—is there something I can—?" The tiny blonde twisted her hair nervously.

He looked up impatiently at the latest intern dispatched to mollify him. "Clear my schedule—notify Keefer that Hirsch or Barrow will have to stand by for me for a bit."

 **Despair**

Luftansa flight 403, Newark to Frankfurt. It had been the only one with an available seat in First Class. Not that Will was an elitist, but even minor celebrity had a long tail and a seat in Economy guaranteed eight hours of being scrutinized by shy folk and pestered by the bolder ones. In any event, even here, his thoughts maintained a protective barrier. The flight attendant had delivered his scotch then literally skittered away, scared off by his frosty demeanor.

Three hours out and the view from the side window was totally black. There was nothing to see on North Atlantic Air Track W at 41,000 feet. Lulled by alcohol and carb-heavy food service, the cabin settled into quiet waiting, and the dim light of a reading light several aisles aft bounced his own silhouette back at him from the black window. He averted his eyes rather than confront the image.

Unable to sleep, he found himself hounded by a cycle of thoughts that began, inevitably, with restating his position as the aggrieved party and ended, just as inevitably, by faulting himself. While distracted by his own hurt, he had unwittingly enabled far greater injury.

 _I let this happen._

He had withheld all communication because it might mean having to listen in turn.

 _She pled for clemency but you granted none._

He had transmuted hurt into rage, embrace into exile, disbelief into conviction. He had ignored the tea leaves that would have foretold this eventuality. Above all, he had been culpably negligent in protecting her.

Experience had always taught him that it was safer to ignore something than acknowledge it. Be wary, and give distance. Finally, he was realizing that he'd been scared all his life, and scared of the wrong things, no less.

 _MacKenzie fell from grace but the fall shouldn't have to kill her._

 **Acceptance**

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

Her chapped lips turned up at one corner. "Pakistan," she corrected, her voice raspy with disuse and dehydration, " _not_ Afghanistan."

Still in shadows a dozen feet away, he shrugged. "You say ee-ther, I say eye-ther."

She tried to force a laugh in response but it dissolved into a strangled sob.

"I don't know—why you're here, Will—I don't—"

He finally moved nearer. "I'm here because I don't understand why _you're_ here, Mac."

"You came all this way—to play word games—"

She sniffled and brought up a palm to wipe away the wetness on her face, but found it encumbered by an IV line and pulse oximeter. Before she could lift the other hand, Will snatched several tissues from the bedside table and dabbed at the worst of the trickle.

"I came all this way to put out the fire on that bridge we've both been burning." His tone was gentle and patient, and he waited for her to meet his gaze. "A broken romance isn't a death sentence, MacKenzie. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear." He folded his fingers over her free hand.

A tentative half-smile quavered on her lips and she closed her eyes. "I don't understand what comes next."

"One step at a time. Your immediate future holds—Jell-O, I think."

There was a sudden _whoosh_ of air as the door pushed open and a harried woman tapped her wrist. "Hours."

Will gave a rapid nod of comprehension.

The woman hung in the door for a moment. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

He shook his head, warding off the patient's barely contained amusement.

"Well—visitation hours are for patient comfort—as well as your own. Go get some sleep, hon, you look all done in."

After the nurse had left, he turned back to Mac and shrugged comically. "Do I?"

"Not ' _done in_ ,'" she smiled weakly, then seemed to hold her breath. "Will you come back?"

Suddenly, he couldn't find any words. His mouth was dry and his head empty. So, he just nodded and twisted his mouth so that it didn't betray him. He squeezed the hand he still held and leaned to plant a non-denominational kiss on Mac's forehead.

"You supplied the courage. I can—follow through—with the rest."


End file.
